100 Top Mac Apps We Happen to Love

Despite all the great reviews Macintosh computers have garnered over the years, we rarely see it stated that Apple’s groundbreaking platform has attracted some of the best designed software on the market today. In fact, we would venture to say that with few exceptions the Mac offers the best possible software for the task at hand.

And that’s from a former Windows user. This bias is partly due to the fact that Apple was first on the market with an integrated smartphone design, pointing the way for Mac developers to create seamless synchronization solutions. But the real story is that the innovation the Macintosh GUI ushered in will celebrate its 30th anniversary next year. Here are our picks for the coolest Mac software:

Adobe Creative Studio 6

Adobe’s Creative Suite includes four useful applications: Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign, Adobe Photoshop and Acrobat X Pro. If you’re a designer, you can’t get by without these famous tools. Now that Adobe has gone Creative Cloud, CS6 is your last opportunity to own Adobe tools outright.

1Password

1Password can create strong passwords, organize them, and insert them in web pages with a handy browser button. Mavericks made me switch to 4.0, which is still in beta. Usability has been improved and the interface is slicker. But, for $18, the iPhone version also needs to be upgraded.

Balsamic Mockups

Balsamiq Mockups is a cross-platform rapid software prototyping tool that lets a UX designer quickly create a mockup of software screens. One minor quibble: No ready-made icons for folders or documents.

Batch Image Resizer

Batch Image Resizer resizes multiple pictures by percent or a fixed size while offering the ability to add watermarks or borders. You can also do some limited renaming, although the program is not as flexible in that regard as our favorite utility, Renamer 4.

Breeze

Breeze is a window management application that is designed for people who want to quickly split-screen a window, or people like us who need to quickly replicate a standard windows size for screenshots.

BusyCal

BusyCal is far better than the Mountain Lion or Mavericks calendar because it works just like the Leopard calendar. It also can can be shared easily via iCloud or Google. And it shows weather icons for an instant update.

Cinch

Gives Mac users a nice Windows 7 feature: Drag a window until the mouse cursor touches either left or right edges of the screen, and the window “cinches”s able to send a clippingsto your iPhone. You can specifiy how many clippings are kept, either 10, 20 or 50. A Pro version ($XX) sends unlimited clippings to your phone.

Cinematica

Need a central place to organize your videos? Cinematica is the iTunes for music or iPhoto for photos, only it can search your collection by technical properties like resolution, aspect ratio, frame rate or video codec.

Clipr

Clipr does two things really well. It remembers your clipboard history and it’s able to send a clippings to your iPhone. You can specify how many clippings are kept, either 10, 20 or 50. A Pro version ($0.99) sends unlimited clippings to your phone.

coconutBattery

Right now, Apple’s menubar battery status reports that there’s a 95% charge left. But coconutBattery tells the truth reporting that 90% is left. This handy utility monitors battery health, by showing how often the battery was charged and contrasting its current maximum capacity with its original capacity.

Coda

Edit HTML code simply and quickly with this nice web development tool. Besides HTML, Coda also handles CSS, Java, PHP and many other development file types. For a limited time, Coda is offering a $75 upgrade price for everyone.

Daylite

Daylite used to be my favorite Mac CRM program, but it has been replaced by Base. The problem: Daylite is so feature-rich, everything becomes harder to use. We’re leaving Daylite on this list for now for people who need a Mac-based CRM recommendation, because it’s definitely nicely designed.

Direct Mail

Direct Mail is a freemium program that lets you create email messages and send them to lists using either your email account or Direct Mail’s pre-paid e3 delivery service, which starts at $15 per month for up to 500 email recipients.

Dropbox

Dropbox lets you save documents and pictures to the cloud, so you can instantly access them on other computers, your iPhone or your iPad. A must have. A free tier saves from 2GB to 16GB. A Pro plan stores 100GB for $9.99 per month.

Fantastical

Fantastical has become our go-to calendar program. Sure, we use BusyCal too, but Fantastical can be called up from the menu bar when one needs it, and its scheduling intelligence is great. It looks beautiful and there is an iPhone app.

FileMaker Pro 12

FileMaker Pro is a fully programmable database design tool that can be used to create custom relational databases and deployed on all platforms; Mac, iPhone and iPad. This product listing is maintained in FileMaker.

FontDoctor

ForkLift 2

ForkLift is now our favorite FTP program, superseding Fetch, which still has not been optimized for Retina displays. ForkLift is fast and features two main windows that can either display your server files or your local disk files, so you can simply drag and drop between the two. You can, of course, also drag and drop between desktop and any window. The program does have a few interface idiosyncrasies, like finding your Favorites, but it’s the best FTP file transfer program today.

GarageBand

As Apple puts it, GarageBand is a whole music creation studio right inside your Mac — complete with keyboard, synths, orchestral and percussion instruments, presets for guitar and voice, an entirely redesigned sound library, and virtual session drummers. Now nothing is holding you back from becoming the next Daft Punk.

GoToMeeting

If you produce or attend webinars or online presentations, GoToMeeting is definitely one of the gold standards of the online meeting world. Work with anyone, anywhere, as long as you can afford the monthly $49 entrance fee. A cheaper monthly service is Join.me, which starts at $13/mo.

iDraw

We’ve been happy campers since we began using iDraw a few months ago. iDraw is the first truly viable alternative to Adobe Illustrator. This vector design and illustration program reads both Illustrator and Photoshop files and can export in a host of formats. If you frequently need to create buttons or logos for websites, iDraw should be your first choice. And, best of all, it’s Retina compatible.

Kaleidoscope

If you code, you know how often you have to compare two pieces of code to see the differences. Kaleidoscope makes this easy and sports a beautiful interface too. Unfortunately, Black Pixel decided to nearly double its price to $70. Not totally ubercool but worth it if you compare files a lot.

Launchbar

Do you dislike having to plow through your application folder or endlessly scrolling the toolbar with 72 app icons that, after a while, all start looking alike? LaunchBar lets you hit Command-Spacebar and enter one or two letters to quickly summon an application.The only thing not to like about Launchbar is that it’s bit expensive for what it does.

Mint QuickView

This Macintosh application is a companion program to the Mint website. It brings the same beautiful graphics to the desktop but adds another nicety: a menu icon that tells you when a bank transaction has occurred. Great tool for organizing your financial life.

Mountain Tweaks

Mountain Tweaks (and Lion Tweaks) lets you customize and correct certain features in Mac OS X 10.7, many of which are undoubtedly annoying. After you download this free app, donate to developer Fredrik Wiker, so he can get a college education. Mountain Tweaks will probably lose its relevance once you upgrade Mavericks, but we’ll see if Wiker releases a Mavericks Tweaks.

Name Mangler

Need to rename a large set of files, like for instance add a file’s pixel dimensions and/or file size to the file name? Name Mangler will do this chore. It can also remove characters from file names starting at a certain position, or add suffixes and prefixes to file names. It will “dumb down” file names for Windows, trim white space, convert AM to am, and add a time-stamp to file names.

Numbers

Numbers is the Excel of the Mac. It offers much of its power, but some might think that’s not enough. Now that Apple has finally upgraded the suite, a new Numbers has appeared that has fewer features than its predecessor. Still we like its new skin a lot and will transition over.

OmniOutliner

OmniOutliner is our favorite tool for creating to-do lists, data lists, or any task that requires outlining. The good news is that The Omni Group is betatesting version 4, which has a much cleaner interface.

OnyX

How about a versatile utility with a nice interface that handles system maintenance tasks and is shareware? That is OnyX, and it’s only available on the Mac. We don’t know if it’s compatible with Mavericks…will let you know.

Pacifist

Pacifist is a shareware application with a suggested donation that opens Mac OS X .pkg package files, .dmg disk images, and .zip, .tar, .tar.gz and .xar archives and allows you to extract individual files and folders. This is useful if an application installed by the operating system becomes damaged and needs to be reinstalled without the hassle of reinstalling all of Mac OS X.

Pages

Pages is the Microsoft Word of the Mac. Like Numbers, Pages has outstanding layout capabilities, as exemplified by its built-in templates. Well worth $20 or getting it free with every new Mac you help sell. Was updated to a 2013 version. See our review of Numbers.

Panorama Sheets

Need to manipulate data? Like join two fields or clean up a database marred by sloppy data entry? Panorama Sheets parses your data fast by doing all its work in RAM. If you don’t need to manipulate more than a few hundred records, you can keep using the demo version, since Panorama Sheets works for free on small databases.

Parallels Desktop

Run Windows apps on your Mac in a separate window. Drag and drop text between Mac and Windows applications, all feats made possible by Parallels. The progress in the field of virtualization is remarkable. Parallels 8.0 is so much easier to use than previous versions. We are planning to update to 9.0 soon.

Pixelmator

Need Photoshop but don’t want to pay Adobe any more money? Pixelmator does what you absolutely need: resizing, retouching, layering and more. We have totally fallen in love with the latest version Pixelmator 3.2. Its ease of use, clean interface and very attractive price make Pixelmator a viable alternative to Photoshop.

Reeder

Silvio Rizzi has written the most gorgeous RSS reader bar none. Reeder syncs with Google Reader feeds but showcases articles beautifully and simply. UPDATE: We’re still waiting for an update from Rizzi for this great app. He has updated the iPhone and iPad Reeder and promises to update this one too, someday.

Renamer 4

Renamer lets you batch rename many files and folders at once. Renamer can even combine multiple operations in one single task. You can batch change file extensions, like changing JPEG to .jpg or change names of pictures from IMG_0051.jpg to something that is easier to recognize.

Safari

For those who need to create screenshots of websites on a regular basis, Safari is the only way to go. Chrome has no setting to get rid of its toolbar, which explains why all advertising screenshots are taken in Safari.

Scrivener

Scrivener is perhaps the most amazing writing organizer and thought outliner. Designed for book authors, Scrivener lets you organize your writing and thoughts by folder or sub-folder. It can even attach a document to a document. We have started moving all of our writing — whether for book, site, collateral or anything else — into Scrivener. Highly recommended for anyone who does any writing, from business plans or brochures to novels.

Search & Replace

Search & Replace is a powerful batch-processing utility that replaces content in text files, renames or trims file names, adds prefixes or suffixes, or changes text to upper and lower case with just one click. It will also provide you with a count of changes, if you like to keep track of things.

Smultron

I have yet to find a simple text editor that does what Smultron does, which is quick-and-dirty CSS or text editing. I really like its search and replace facility. It also has a great uppercase to lowercase to title case, etc. feature. Glad to see that Smultron is now compatible with Mavericks.

SplashID Safe

We have two password keepers in this list. That’s because SplashID does a better job of organizing, while 1Password is better at inserting. Both could be far easier to use. UPDATE: Splash has taken a lot of heat for its latest update, which forces people to hand over their password to enable its new cloud synch feature. We do not recommend upgrading either the desktop app or the iPhone app until we can find an alternative. Unfortunately, Mavericks’ built-in solution is not great either.

Suitcase Fusion 5.0

The bane of dealing with a lot of fonts is that the one you need is not always available. Suitcase Fusion makes it easy to manage a huge font library by turning fonts on and off when needed. Not cheap but definitely worth it.

Text Expander

Here is another program that we wished we had acquired earlier. Text Expander saves so much time typing repetitive things like URLs and return addresses, simply amazing. It even handles embedded terms that require further input when you type. Highly recommended.

Things

Things is a well-executed to-do list manager and was one of the first apps that allowed users to synch between Mac and its iPhone app ($10), perfect for list checkers. What we really like about Things is that it has a Helper app that lets you add tasks from any program (as long as Things is running).

TuneUp Gold

TuneUp will parse your iTunes music library and find song duplicates, cover art and correct information, including artist, track name, album name, etc. While it is not Retina-optimized — particularly galling given its $50 price — it does work well.

TweetDeck

Heard the bad news? After taking Facebook out of Tweetdeck, Twitter has announced the end of the road for TweetDeck, a very popular preferred Twitter client. So get it while you still can. Perhaps we will make the older version available here, so you can still download what was once the best social media client.

VLC Media Player

VLC lets you watch videos encoded in formats QuickTime player cannot handle, including MKV, WMC and AVI. As CNET puts it: If you want a player that can be totally customized and configured to suit — and is not only updated frequently but also regularly offers new features and options created by a huge community of programmers and users — the answer is VLC Media Player.

White List

White List will parse your Apple Mail folders and provide stats on email addresses you have communicated with and ranks them in order of number of emails sent. An invaluable tool for making sure your email lists contain the people you correspond with frequently.

Wondershare AllMyTube

There are many utilities that claim to be able to download videos from YouTube, but most don’t work very well. Even iLivid, which we recommended last, stopped working. Wondershare AllMyTube downloads the highest resolution videos available from YouTube, and even Vimeo. A welcome tool for presenters.

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Behind We Blog The World

Renee Blodgett is the founder and editor of We Blog the World, which was created in 2008. Renee has lived in ten countries and traveled to nearly 80, giving her a unique understanding and appreciation of international cultures. She is ranked #12 Social Media Influencer by Forbes and referenced in two renowned books on how social media is changing how we live our lives.

Since its launch, the site has grown organically across multiple online platforms. We Blog the World combines the magic of an online culture and travel magazine with a global blog network, where independent voices capture the best cultural experiences, events, ideas and stories for the discerning, educated and savvy globetrotter.

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